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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Earth Day

I don’t really celebrate one particular day as Earth Day. I try to do my best for old Mother Earth as often and as well as I possibly can. After all, where would we be without Her? Empty space just isn’t an option! The last few days of warmth and spring flowers have reminded me how much life we owe to the turning of the Earth around the Sun. I’m so grateful that I have my little piece of Her to play in. (And fight the sow bugs for!) I picked a salad’s worth of greens, some from the garden and some from pots in the greenhouse, and we’ll have it for dinner in celebration. Hopefully if it doesn’t rain later today we can plant our new flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum var. King Edward VII) in the front yard. It’ll go in place of our big hellebore that we lost this winter. More substitutions to come.

Speaking of substitutions, T-Man spent yesterday after work demolishing the side fence (click for bigger):

It makes our backyard look so large and open! Hope nobody uses it for an opportunity to waltz in and remove anything before he can get the new fence built. We moved a few pots and things farther out of view anyway just in case. That poor fence has needed bigtime help for a number of years. T says that it fell down because the plants that were holding it up let go! True. He’s going to recycle some of the wood in other places in the garden including revamping the compost box.

In crafty news, I’ve completed two FOs: the Monkey See Monkey Too Socks and the Selbu Damselfly Tam. I did quite a lot of work on them at our fun Ravelry Pride & Prejudice & Spaghetti night at Infinity0’s place on Saturday evening. Finished up the sock toes and grafted them and then made great headway on the tam which I completed on Sunday. Both are blocked and just waiting for me to finish up the writing up of the details. Next post, promise.

Of course finishing so many projects made me start another one! I used some of the pretty yarn I dyepainted last week with my friend Jo:

It’s the one on the left, shades of burgundy and reds dyed over Knitpicks’ Bare sock yarn. Not sure I’m going to buy this stuff again. It’s almost too soft for socks and I may be making a big mistake knitting these for my DIL The White Lady, who is notoriously hard on her socks. I’m using the Spring Forward socks pattern by Linda Welch from Knitty. Not hard to knit and very pretty:

There’s a wee bit more knitted on those socks since the photo. Meanwhile I’ve been plugging away on the Papyrine Wrap which is about halfway to the finish line. I alternate between enjoying the knitting and being totally sick of it. I compromise by just wanting it finished asap. My goal of at least one repeat per day is pretty much being kept – even if I have to work a little harder to catch up occasionally. Remind me again why I’m doing this? Oh yeah, for it hopefully to be accepted into an exhibit and perhaps a fashion show. This will be at Emily Carr University of Art & Design, which in its older incarnation of the Vancouver School of Art is where I flunked out…er, quit after a year and a half in the late 1960’s. I learned not much worthwhile there except that I am not cut out to be An Artist. (It’s also where I met T-Man. I always say that was the best part of my experience in art school.) It will be pretty good for my ego though to be exhibited there. Take that! Only took me 40 years.

One more item today – I’m not sure if this link will work for you but give it a try if you’re interested. If it works it will take you to the latest Embellishments newsletter from Interweave. At the bottom are links to free digital issues of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts magazines. This is the full magazine, not just a sample. You can save them to your own computer if you want. ETA: Don’t bother because you need a subscription and password to access them once they are saved to your desktop. Just read them in your browser. I have to say that computer-literate as I am, I still prefer the paper copy in my hands but pixels certainly take up less space on my shelves! I already own the Quilting Arts issue but I’m going to have an argument with myself on whether or not to buy the paper issue of CPS. Plus a digital subscription is just about half the price of paper. How badly do I like to hold paper rather than my little netbook computer? Decisions, decisions.